By JAMES DERK, Scripps Howard News Service

There are a bunch of tidbits you may not know about that fill today's notebook. Let's see if we can fill in some items you may not know about.

The internal battle between Windows XP and Windows Vista continued this week with the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, which will extend the life of the venerable XP for another few years.

Reader mail fills the box today; let's answer some of your pressing general interest questions.Q. I manage a Little League baseball team and the league keeps sending me attachments in XLS format, which I think are Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, but when I double-click on them my computer says I don't have any program on my computer to open them.

The computer world is no stranger to format wars and we're about to have another one with the new connection format to the next generation of computer monitors. Oh yes, we're about to mix it all up again.

In my computer repair business there is a steady flow of PCs that arrive with the same complaint ... the owner one day turned on the computer and got an error message such as "Operating System Not Found."

Letters have filled the inbox again -- besides the ones from the Apple fanatics mad about last week -- so let's get to it.Q: Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is out, but I still don't have it from Windows Update. Should I download it manually or keep waiting for it?

Oh come on, Steve, is this how we're going to play ball now?Steve Jobs is one of my favorite people, the $1-a-year chairman of Apple Computer and a really smart dude. Really smart. Apple, you know, is the home of the iPod, the Mac, the PowerBook, the Lisa, all that cool stuff.

You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't make a mess in your own nest. And, most of all, you don't tick off eBay PowerSellers.

Reader mail clogs the box this week after a few weeks of reviews, so let's get right to it.Q. You mentioned in your column that you are using a scanner that is saving files to a very tiny server with redundant drives. What kind of server is that?

Every time the mailman comes to my house these days I am reminded of the late, great Roy Scheider in Jaws, remarking "you're gonna need a bigger boat."